Give In To What's Kind of Clear Or Stay Persistant?

Well, Hi i am new ^-^ and well i kind of have this lingering question that i would really like to get some advice from by you guys, so any comments would be really appreciated.

Let me give you some context into the situation before i ask the question:

I am 17 years of age, i realised and more or less accepted the fact i was gay at the age of 14, and well I have had a few problems with it since i do more or less belive in god just like my family, but i know this isnt something i cannot control, since its the way i feel and is why i have mainly decided to stay closeted from all of my family since they are religous as well. but with friends however i wasnt sure how they would react so i was pretty reluctant to tell them anything to be honest, i was having problems myself dealing with it.

So more or less 2 years go by and i am ok with the way things are, i did have a few crushes here and there :P never dated anyone reluctant to display my feelings i guess, some i knew where gay some i didnt know at all or i knew for sure.

Now this is more or less where my Problem begins

2-3 months ago i started sixth form in my old secondary school since it has my options there (and i get to hang out with my friends :D), there was quite a large amount of people who were new and well i was kind of scouting >.> more or less (Kinda embarrasing to say) and well i met this guy. His name was Marcus and well we started to hang out quite a bit after a first encounter and we did talk a lot during school time since we had 2 out of 3 subjects with each other, as well as some free periods and well i felt really weird around him, he is a nice guy, funny and we have the same humour :P we do bond quite well though some memes and i do show him some since his are kinda outdated most of the time. i can also confindently say more or less that i know he does like spending time with me as well, i kind of see him more less go out of his way to speak to me. we do some weird stuff sometimes that can kind of be seen as flirting but there is no real picture around it. because of my weird feelings for this guy i asked some friends for help and came out to them, asking for advice, they said try to talk and hang out with him which i am trying but sometimes while we do have really good days where we talk we have days were he blankes me most of the day or we hardly talk about anything at all and it really frustrates me. ;-;

Side note: We have hung out once by ourselves during the half term holidays which was most likely the most intimate moment we have had so far, but i would go and say it was a guarentee that he likes me. However unfortunately for me it is most likely that he is straight, if i am lucky i guess bisexual, so i feel like with the signs i am getting i should just kinda stop talking to him? i dont really know how to approach this, and it frustrates me to no end. Should i just not bother and not say anything, i mean i know it will hurt but i dont know if it will hurt more than when i do tell him how i feel and me being right in the first place.

so i am kinda stuck.

Should i just persist with this occasional high moments of the day mixed in with days of complete confusion, frustration and sadness in the hopes of "getting the guy" in the hopes of being well aquainted enough for me to ask him out, and if rejected just lose whatever shread of a good thing i had.

Or Should i give in to whats kind of clear and just kinda hurt but not as much (Take the safe way out in a sense) so i can just bottle up my feelings back up and while it will hurt, let it hurt less than him kind of ignoring me at times, and then randomly see him hold some sort of interest in me and get my hopes up.

Thanks for reading this if you have read this far into it ;-; i know its long but i wanted to provide as much info as possible so that i can know that you guys are able to have as much info on this situation that i can give, since i cannot really say i know many people who are gay at all, since i live in the north west of the uk :P.

Regards Hardly Annie